Yip. I took the government what, 17 years…? from suing to breaking up AT+T, and they were the largest company in America that entire time.

At+t tried to slap em with some exorbitant long distance charges and Uncle Sam got tired of the fuck around.

To today; Google’s been showing the wrong people the wrong kind of ads. Showing representatives ads for laundromats and daycares that offer drivinga ed after looking up how to launder money and traffic children. NO google, I did NOT mean THAT

They are thinking the got the customer by the balls because they’re a state sanctioned monopoly. They’re so big the CEO of Samsung has essentially the same power as the SK president.

Every major corp out of SK is a state sanctioned monopoly. The government tells Samsung “make washing machines now” and Samsung does.

I know it’s been widely overlooked to allow South Korea to economically develop after the armistice, cold war and all, but at some point the rest of the free trading world is going to have to hit them with tariffs to protect native, or critical industries.

Frankly I’m really tired of looking the other way for any reason. Every other day it’s a headline about how some government or multinational led the public on a 20 year gaslighting campaign. If I were to say, “hey did you hear that story about XXXY(any well known mega corp)?” Do you think I’d have a positive wholesome story to share? No. Because there never is. The structure of a corporation is set up to protect financiers from liability from the crimes theyre guaranteed to commit thru abusive, shortsighted, toxic business. It’s literally the fucking point. But we don’t have to accept that, and we don’t have to choke back and somehow keep down our sense of justice, or be passively complicit, which is to nueter your morality, your sense of self

Our individual actions do matter in this case. Like don’t buy shit off Temu, theyre using slave labor. Don’t endorse that. Don’t buy anything out of Dubai or Saudi Arabia, they, also, keep slaves. Don’t support slavery. Including wage slavery. Don’t do business with Israel until an non Zionist coalition is back in charge. Don’t buy anything Russian. Genocide is not an acceptable modern practice. It CAN’T be. Boycott Mississippi and Louisiana as well, since they like to let their prisoners die of treatable conditions and bury them in unmarked graves. That is ALSO a genocide. Don’t fucking fund crimes against humanity. This is kindergarten levels of sophistication.

And hopefully enough people will actually live their morals and gain seats of power, because we have to. Otherwise waves hands THIS.

Senators go for as little as $2000. I wish I were kidding.

There’s absolutely noncompetes baked into that sale. Noncompetes might not be legal, or applicable, torards employees anymore, but they sure as shit are still legal and binding as a condition for a business’s sale.

My older liberal banker brother asked me, small business owning tradesman, why I don’t just go start some small community in Montana and live without the dollar, yada yada.

I laughed, he said he’s serious, I said “yea, the bankers that own the feds are serious too, and they use that to control what kind of society we decide for ourselves. We don’t have the freedom to choose. We have the freedom to choose but only from these two choices. We won’t even allow Cuba to do that shit, still today, 60years under embargo. And they’re their own country! The bankers would erase me in a heartbeat”.

That’s what I do being off-grid. I have my battery bank then a series of Supercaps to essentially act as an on/off ramp//drawbridge and temper quick demands. Kinda like an inverse soft starter so this is suuuuper interesting to me.

Shit, I didn’t know that, thank you for sharing, imma set mine and my wives phones up now.

I’m flattered. Thank you.

I told my wife if we ever decided on kids (which we won’t) I want to name the kid after my hero. She asked “who’s that?”.

“Mega man”

“What if it’s a girl?”

“We can call her Meg”

"Middle name?”

“No middle name. MegaBlake, that’s it.”

I’m wearing a mega man belt she bought me right now actually.🤓

Every single comment here is describing symptoms but not the cause.

Enshitification is the evolution to the final form, only possible after the company, thru merger/acquisition or stock manipulation (leveraged buy outs, acquiring controlling stake, shorting a company into insolvency, etc), has achieved a commanding monopoly.

Then it flexes it’s monopoly powers, the buttons fly off its shirt and the monster shows it’s true colors.

We have laws to prevent this. Lina Khan is the first FTC chair to start holding these companies to meaningful account in my lifetime (yea, Microsoft/netscape is exponentially smaller than todays issues). Meta, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon all need to be broken up into a thousand different companies, same as we did with AT&T. Uber, Angieslist, homeaglow, all the contractors pretending they’re just networking hubs (like some union hall) need to busted up and gigwork made to contend with employment law, which it can’t, because it’s all bad faith exploitation.

And for fucks sake we need to make the fine for white collar crime that extends state lines to necessitate the forfeiture of the entire C-suite’s and board of directors assets, both domestically and internationally, upon threat of seal team 6. Empty their bank accounts and leave them with nothing, like they regularly do to employees. They’re so fucking smart they can earn it all again, right? Right!? Corporations are the largest thief in the land, just in WAGE THEFT. Everything else they do that’s slimy is all BONUS. The 2nd largest thief in all the land? the fucking Police force. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, democracy doesn’t work in mental institutions. We don’t need to defund the police, we need to fire all of them and start over with transparency. If casino employees can be video taped all day, so can cops. Fuck em.

What America truly needs is another Teddy Roosevelt. We need to revive the Progressive party with the Bull Moose as the symbol. Protect the environment, protect the family by protecting the workers, end legal loopholes and trustbust the 1% back down into the 10%.

And if we don’t? The path ahead is obvious, I for one, don’t want to live in Blade Runner, but that’s where we’re going until we stop fucking around and right ship.

The 2-4000lbs that would make up the new floor would def change the handling.

Imagine being late in the subscription cost. O_o

Man that audio/video of Bibi saying genocide would continue and they were gonna level Gaza because the American people have given them a blank check and full support …yea …that was everything I expected from that fascist.

And as fascists (and corporatists; tho any difference is arguable) always do, he said the quiet part out loud, insinusting Israel’s stretched past their compacity while invigorating the anti-genocide (which I would hope is all of us, but clearly isn’t. I don’t see how a moral person rationalizes killing 20000 children) center/left to bolder action against Biden.

The news getting out of Bibi’s forces beating down the Orthodox in Jerusalem for protesting is indicative of a few things, mainly that dissent at home is greater than his propaganda machine can keep the lid on. His propaganda machine has been busch league, AT BEST. Obviously lying with AI generated photos. Idk about you, but I can’t believe a single thing that comes out of a zionists mouth. If the world didn’t stop their aggression, I think we all know full well they would’ve killed every single Palestinian down to the last.

Zionist has become as negative a word to me as Nazi. The only difference being pro-jew or anti-jew. I spit at them both.

I also don’t think the average person willve saved up 5mil to retire on, in fact I don’t think the average person will be able to retire, period.

The majority of bankruptcies are from medical expenses, from people WITH health insurance.

If you think that that’s acceptable, then I question your morality.

The whole point wasn’t in the actual numbers but feel free to use it to practice your algebra. Focusing on the numbers avoids the point completely, but I guess that is easier then root causes and structural problems to our capitalism/legal system.

That’s something people should consciously be aware of because with the system as fucked as it is now, we are all guaranteed to end up poor.

Assume you save up 5mil for retirement. You fall and break yr hip. Insurance covers 80%. How much of that 5mil you gonna have left?

Answer; by the time we get there inflation will have fucked all the value of the dollar. You’ll be selling you house to pay that bill, after emptying your bank account, cuz Medicaid doesn’t help until you’ve liquidated all your assets.

Oh doncha know manufacturers are already working on that.

The whole subscription economy grift. They’re gonna say you own the basic version arguing against the ‘if you can’t modify it you never really own it’ crowd, until they’ve spent enough money to bribe those in power to fashion their win for them, then they’re gonna turn around and say we never really own anything and make reselling illegal.

Reselling takes care of itself if you simply stop offering physical media…which, idk…seems to be the trend of the last 15 years, don’t cha think?

Is pirating old snes and genesis roms really piracy if there’s no other way to get it?

Roms are the reason half those games are still around and not dead media. The popularity of roms is why Nintendo made the throw back, video game companies roll up all the time, very few have longevity and even if those most would’ve been fine just letting the old games die in obscurity.

It’s a very capitalist, or monopolistic, worldview.

To run a business corrillary; Exxon and BP were undisputed leaders in their fields going way back, whether or not they were number 1 isn’t even important, they were/are major players. Studies were conducted in the 70s that showed climate change was guaranteed (nevermind newsprint from the 1900’s talking about the same thing. 120 years ago this was foreseen) gave them 2 options.

1. Use that knowledge and invest heavily into solar, wind and other energy generating tech, since they already know the energy sector as players in it, they have a huge advantage on every start up. They can control the conversation. If you’re business is going to be made obsolete and replaced, well, it makes the most sense for you to do that to yourself, right?

2. Ooooooooor suppress the research, PR campaign public support, act innocent when scientists with scruples finally catch up, and extract as long as you can while you can.

Which did the ruling capitalist hegemon (cuz oil runs the world) choose?

Giving your kids all the tools so they can go create and contribute however they see fit is a fucking admiral goal. In fact, it’s the best you can do for your child. Taking away all challenge and hardship by passing along immeasurable wealth does not help a persons pro-social maturing. How could it, it’s isolationist by its own very nature. This is why the Scrooge trope exists.

The same logic needs to be extended to copyright law. 20 years then public domain. You had an idea that took off? Good for you! Now why should the inventor of pixie sticks not have to work ever again? If anything, they’ve just got the next 20 years of developing and innovating funded. They already have an advantage. Those who fail to use it, imo, shouldnt warrant pity. We shouldn’t reward laziness and laurels shouldn’t be a ride at societies amusement park.

He only likes his mRna in solid form. Depending on his mood it’s either free based or taken as a suppository.

As one does, y’know. As one does.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

-Ben Franklin

I also only use Facebook thru Firefox. Marketplace to be exact, I lost interest on the social media side in 2016 and haven’t scrolled down once since then.

Reddit thru Firefox spits out different front pages if it detects mobile v desktop version. I rarely go there but I can not stand the mobile ad/smut push, like it’s way to obvious just BUY THIS and BOOBIES. Unusable imo. And I’m just talking about the mobile version of Firefox, I won’t use their app. Fuck reddit.